


heart of glass

by Verbyna



Series: rifle, scissor, stone [4]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissociation, Don't Try This At Home, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mental Conditioning, Mentors, Panic Attacks, Underage Sex, because the characters aren't in a good mental place to give consent, interrogators are terrifying, kent "they only want you when you're seventeen" parson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 03:44:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10845795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: It’s ten in the morning and Jack is having a panic attack behind the science lab and Kent thinks,oh, so that’s why he always vanishes before missions.





	heart of glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedusaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/gifts).



> word to the wise: i almost triggered a dissociative episode in myself while editing this, so keep that in mind if you think you might be triggered. it also contains some pretty fucked up d/s patterns, though the characters themselves don't frame them as such; mental conditioning of the turning-a-teenager-into-a-violent-interrogator type; and an onscreen panic attack witnessed by the pov character.
> 
> thanks to jedusaur for the beta and the enabling <3 i'm soundslikepenance on tumblr

It’s ten in the morning and Jack is having a panic attack behind the science lab and Kent thinks, _oh, so that’s why he always vanishes before missions._

He tracks Jack’s labored breaths the way he tracks marks’ breaths when they’re Kent’s to extract information from, a steady count at the back of his mind and an eye on visibly pulsing blood vessels to guesstimate the heart rate. No touching until he has to, that’s the rule. Fear has to run its course.

Jack’s hands shake so hard that he can’t even cover his own face.

Kent’s never felt less human than he does right now, emptied of anything that might help Jack. He can’t touch, he can’t take charge because that’s Jack’s job; he can’t call any adults like the student he pretends to be, because making Jack sit through school counselling would be worse than only making him fake normalcy in class.

He _knows_ there used to be an instinct here. He looks for it, but all he hears is George’s voice. After a couple of minutes, the strain vanishes as suddenly as the snap of a rubber band.

“Breathe with me,” he says, quiet and calm. Jack blinks twice, looks up at him. Kent kneels next to Jack and stretches his lips into a smile. “There you are. Come on, in,” and he inhales, “out,” and he exhales. He can’t feel his face, but he feels the texture of the ground through his slacks better than he normally would.

“I can’t--” Jack tries, eyes darting around like he’s a trapped animal.

“Just breathe,” Kent says. He keeps counting. He keeps breathing.

Jack eventually calms down, and Kent takes him to their next class, sort of floating. That’s a good thing. That’s a very good thing, this weightless clarity, because he knows exactly what to do when he’s not pulled down by his fear and his concern and the way he feels about Jack.

There are thoughts underneath the calm like fast cars taking hairpin turns, screeching and slipping beyond Kent’s control. They seem very far away. Up above, Kent is logical and present and his numb hands pass Jack a pencil before he asks. Nothing is wrong.

Jack had a panic attack. They have to write an essay for next time. Anything that wants to hurt Jack will have to go through Kent. He looks down at his unexpectedly neat notes and writes down a source in the margin. How weird that he remembered it now, when he flipped through that book last year.

 

+

 

George is waiting for him in front of a monitor for their next training session. Kent follows the cord that connects it to her standard issue laptop as he sits down across from her. The tabletop is glass, so she’ll see all of him.

The table is glass, so he knows there’s nowhere to hide.

“Is this like that scene in Clockwork Orange?” he asks, because it was assigned in class last month and he watched it three times. “Are you gonna show me something awful?”

George tilts her head, like he’ll be more satisfactory from a different angle. The smile slides off his face, and it’s a relief to let it go. He doesn’t need to be charming with her, he never has to pretend with her. He can feel his shoulders dropping.

“Aversion therapy is fascinating,” she says, “but sensitizing you would be against the point, wouldn’t it?” Kent shrugs, conceding the point.

He doesn’t get why people who weren’t trained by George avoid her like she’s diseased. She was never anything less than honest with him, kind when she trimmed him to size. They started discussing his psyche back in January, the bits they worked on, the parts that still need work; she’s always honest with him, and he has input on methods. No other adults ever tried to involve him in his own development, not even his mom. Especially his mom.

“These are interrogations where I’ve failed,” George explains. “Why do interrogations fail?”

“Shock and death. Bloodloss, often. Interruptions,” Kent lists dutifully. “Abnormal fear responses. Above-average pain tolerance. Suicidal tendencies. Martyr complexes. Exceptional training. Poor timing on threat-reward patterns. Shitty phrasing.”

 

George hums. “Good answers, we’ll get back to them. But these,” she says, waving at the laptop, “are all due to combinations of factors. I’ll play the clips twice. You’ll tell me why they failed, the point where they went south, and how they could’ve been salvaged.”

There are only six videos; four hours later, Kent and George are eating protein bars in front of the laptop, monitor long forgotten.

“Fucking protocol,” she says, eyeing the screen with a scowl. “We could’ve done this in your room.”

“Yeah, but maybe not after the pigs blood incident.” That took two days to clean. George nods to concede the point, but petulantly.

The longer they’re together, the easier it is to be things like funny or petulant. Jack always looks at Kent weirdly when Kent says he likes George’s sense of humor, but when it’s just them, she always cracks him up. It could be the way she flays him just by being there, so he doesn’t try to be anything except present, but he’s pretty sure it’s the fact that she’s genuinely funny.

They chew their protein bars in peace. Kent wants to fast forward to the next part, but there’s a rhythm to their sessions. Short of a general alarm, his job is to follow it.

“Tell me about Jack,” George asks eventually.

“He had a panic attack the day we were supposed to turn in our AP American History essays,” Kent reports. He pushes his hands into his hoodie pocket, bar wrapper and all. He’ll toss it out later. “I didn’t overstep.”

George pulls back and zeroes in on his face. Which sucks, because she hasn’t looked at him like that since he was fifteen. He’s not a _liability._ He knows what he’s supposed to do, and he did well.

“What did you do?”

“Synched breaths and got him to class,” he says, keeping the hurt out of his voice. “It wasn’t hard, but it was--”

“Hmm?” George hums, but it’s all wrong. He heard the hum on the tapes, he learned it from her. His spine stiffens even as he curls himself tighter. Give her what she wants, screams Kent’s brain. Let her help. _Let her in,_ says something deeper than that. It vanishes when Kent tries to pinpoint it.

“I didn’t know what to do at first,” he confesses. “Then I chilled and got him through. Didn’t take much.”

“You were scared,” she says, and Kent deletes it from his record. Whatever. “How did it feel to chill?”

It’s hard to put it into words. What’s freedom when it’s so practical? All he did was think of the next step, A to B to C. Besides, that’s between him and Jack. He doesn’t know why he brought it up, but if Jack wanted a debrief, Kent wouldn’t be under scrutiny. He hates feeling like a spy.

“It felt like nothing,” he tells George. “Took me a while, but it wasn’t hard.”

“What were your classmates wearing?”

He doesn’t know. He digs for it and all he gets is uniforms, which is shit because they always wear uniforms, but he doesn’t know who tucked their shirt or rolled up the elastic on their skirt. His breath speeds up.

“Were you kinda blank? Hyperaware?”

Kent nods mutely.

“You dissociated,” George concludes. “Why?”

“To tell him,” says Kent’s mouth, suddenly so far from his hands and knees and George’s warmth. “To tell him what to do.”

George leans in. She smells like blood, which is home and a job well done. Kent relaxes a little. “Do you think he’ll do it during assignments?”

“No,” says Kent. He’s fading again, so he focuses on the words. “He’s reliable.”

“Did you see it before?”

“No.”

She watches him like he’s prey for a few seconds, but he’s telling the truth. Eventually she shakes her head and sits back. He notices that he really needs to pee.

“You did well, but you have to be there. Think of something funny next time. Something a little wrong, but right there. Let everything fade except for that.” This is old ground, sorting through feelings, so Kent doesn’t bother nodding. “Touch him if you have to,” she adds, and Kent’s brain skids to a stop.

“Touch him?”

“Hold him with you,” George says. Kent can’t tell why she says it, her face is so controlled. “Keep him in his body. Whatever you need to do, we’ll go over technique next time.”

Touching Jack. It takes root below the patterns, even if next time is the very next day. Touching Jack the way Jack needs it, because he needs it, because it’s Kent’s job to keep Jack focused on the prize. Because Jack’s body delivers the killing blow but Kent watches over it, wrings everything from the body before it’s Jack’s to end, because Jack is not balanced or safe but Kent doesn’t care, does he.

When he isn’t floating, clear-headed and cold, Kent loves Jack. It’s there like gravity.

 

+

 

It’s been two months since the first attack and Kent’s wondering if he made the right call, not saying anything to Jack. They’re at mass with Jack’s parents, Bob and Alicia and then Jack up against Kent.

Work’s been light, two takeouts and two questionings. Jack looks at him sometimes like he _sees_ every part of Kent and like he wants it and he doesn’t know he can ask for it, and Kent would give him anything, his platitudes and his body and his brutality. Whatever Jack needs, but Jack doesn’t ask.

“Come to my room?” Jack finally whispers, this one exceptional time. They’re in line to receive the sacrament, but Bob and Alicia went ahead, so they can’t hear. It took Kent’s hand on Jack’s back to herd him to the queue.

Kent squeezes Jack’s elbow. Of course. Of course he’ll go if it’ll stop Jack shaking. If it’ll keep Jack where he should be, voicing all of Kent’s orders so he doesn’t have to work through the meaning before he steps forward and does what George taught him to do.

“I’ll be there after dark,” he tells Jack. He holds everything else back. _Make it easy,_ says the George in his head, so Kent does.

 

+

 

Jack touching him is the easiest thing in the world. When Jack touches him, it feels like Kent’s done a good job, even if he hasn’t done anything except beat him at video games.

He looks at Jack’s mouth, his white-knuckled hands, his colourless eyes. Everything is tilting, but Jack is not afraid. His hand on the controller doesn’t feel any different from the hand that pushes Kent down and sideways, so he slides right under Jack’s weight.

“Can we--”

“Yes,” says Kent’s mouth. Of course; Jack is Kent’s, and he doesn’t want to overstep and talk, he wants Jack to keep dragging his nails down Kent’s chest like that, just like that. Kent was briefed on sex, he knows exactly what to expect, and he knows Jack better than he’ll ever know a mark.

Jack doesn’t want a virgin. Jack has enough on his shoulders.

Kent traces his fingers down Jack’s chest, counting their breaths. He lets his awareness stretch to the boundaries of Jack’s room one last time before he narrows it to Jack’s reactions.

“Do you want--” Jack starts to ask, and Kent kisses the question right out of his mouth.

When Jack reaches down to cup Kent’s crotch, Kent curses himself for gasping so hard, because he’ll have to remember to do it every time. Then Jack slides his fingers up, sliding across Kent’s cotton underwear, and down below the elastic, around the base of his dick, until he’s cupping Kent’s balls.

“Please,” Kent begs. Jack’s dry fingertips press against Kent’s hole once, twice, like an afterthought or a spasm.

Kent doesn’t think about the eleven targets they eliminated already, or how they only got close enough for it because they look too young to be a threat. He doesn’t think about the looks he’s starting to get at the compound, even when George isn’t around. He doesn’t think about any of it very hard. It’s like meditation.

His body loosens.

It’s funny how Jack’s breathing too hard, as though Kent isn’t his. It’s funny enough that Kent laughs and slides down Jack’s body as smoothly as he would if he was sniffing a mark, halfway through the question. As easily as the snakes George told him to mimic.

“Yes,” Kent says. “Come on.”

He can see the exact moment when Jack stomps down on his hangups. He was waiting for it so he could let go.

“What do you want?” he asks, and Jack says, “You,” and Kent goes away.

 _Jack,_ he thinks, but Jack is right there, out of touch. _Look at me,_ Kent thinks, but Jack doesn’t need him to be there, so he stays above it, above his body, and he thinks about love.

He rolls them over so he’s on top and looks down at Jack’s open face. And he knows, down to his bones, that no one else will ever see it. Jack isn’t shaking anymore. Whatever it was, Jack wipes it clean.

Kent doesn’t feel dirty, no matter what the warnings said. All he feels is _new._


End file.
